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Essay Sample On Tolerance
Tolerance is one of the basic requirements of the modern world community that ensures effective and mutually beneficial cooperation. Tolerance mainly improves the political, scientific, economic, and other aspects of the international partnership of a country. Moreover, tolerance is an integral part of every culture since it promotes effective communication among the representatives of different social and religious groups. Related concepts through which tolerance can be explained include happiness, freedom, violence, and discrimination.
Walker and Kavedžija define happiness as a private good feeling that results from a long sequence of changes and shifts, which occur in the dominant conceptions of the place and role of people in the universe, and the end of life. It implies that the concept of happiness includes the relationships with people and values, the questions of virtue, life, and the end of life, and covers many other essential aspects (Walker and Kavedžija). In addition, happiness can be depicted through such concepts as freedom, love, and welfare. Happiness is easily achieved if a person follows the path of love and faith. Nevertheless, it is essential to highlight that such terms as tolerance and happiness remain intrinsic to the claims of truth and justice inherent in different religions, political parties, and other social groups (Janmaat and Keating).
Tolerance is one of the concepts that are similar to the notion of freedom. The concept of freedom is considered to be an expression of the truth of human beings. Tolerance is the key to the freedom of people from state interference with their private life. Freedom contributes to the diversity of the world, which is the value of tolerance. The life of society as well as that of an individual is based on the influence of ideas, views, and theories developed during the history of mankind. Thus, tolerance can be interpreted as indifference, the impossibility of understanding, or condescension.
According to theoretical studies, tolerance is a phenomenon that is permeated by violence, since the regime of tolerance always involves imposing an identity on those affected by the relevant practice. The concept of positive tolerance can give rise to violence because it stimulates the formation of a collective entity that not only becomes a driving force in the struggle for minority rights but also helps to legitimize violence against the group of individuals (Corneo and Jeanne 699). On the contrary, being tolerant does not mean respecting opposite values, regardless of their essence. Tolerance is not about recognizing and respecting terrorists or criminals. It also does not imply that people with opposite views agree on conflicting issues. Therefore, tolerance is not about morality. It is more about respect towards the legitimate freedom of ideas, which allows for the existence of differences between tolerant people, which should certainly take non-violent forms.
Tolerance and discrimination both depend on the choice of community. The applicable example is the discrimination of Jews by the Nazis that caused mass destruction of the whole race and ethnic groups of people. At present, discrimination does not manifest itself in social problems such as poverty or unemployment. However, hate speeches and hate crimes have a significant impact on the lives of many Jews (Mummendey and Wenzel 163). Frequently, this concept is not recognized as a topical issue by the major part of society since it gives an impression that it is a problem of victims, rather than society as a whole. Another example is the Second World War which started because of discrimination since one nation decided that it was better than others and deserved more power and territory. The concept of tolerance was evident at the end of the war during the return of property between different states in order to reach an agreement and make residents happy in the aftermath of terror and discrimination (Mummendey and Wenzel 166). In this case, tolerance can be displayed as the ability to overcome the hate of enemies and find the strength to make peace, as happened between Jews and Germans.
The community plays a significant role in the development of tolerance and discrimination, since it may express it through crime or assistance to another country. This term is now used to refer to a wide range of tolerant attitudes towards the lifestyle and existence of social groups, political parties, or ideas that many people find unacceptable. Majorly, it is about religious, national, racial, political, sexual minorities, and gender-specific tolerance (male or female) (Mummendey and Wenzel 167). Typically, the principle of tolerance is not recognized by religious fundamentalists, racists, sex chauvinists, radical nationalists, and xenophobes. Moreover, totalitarian and authoritarian societies are also largely intolerant of certain social groups or other people's views and opinions.
In conclusion, the concept of tolerance can be interpreted through the notions of happiness, freedom, violence, and discrimination. The concepts of happiness, freedom, and tolerance imply that people live in total satisfaction without experiencing violence and discrimination. On the contrary, violence and social discrimination are opposite to tolerance, but they can be reflected simultaneously in one society. The most vivid examples are the Holocaust against Jews that was undertaken by the Nazis and the start of the Second World War, during which people lived in the conditions of constant discrimination and terror that were provided by other nations. Accordingly, Germans preferred discrimination to tolerance which led to the mass destruction of the whole nation in the long run.
Works Cited
Corneo, Giacomo and Olivier Jeanne. "A theory of tolerance,†Journal of Public Economics, vol. 93, no 5-6, 2009, 691-702.
